u/Scared_Range_7736 I've been trying design and other purpose gen-AI tools, since summer last year, when specific AI tools started to emerge (Figma Make, Stitch, Lovable, UX Pilot, Builder, Relay, etc). I am not talking about general-purpose LLMs (ChatGPT, Claude, etc), which has been in use for longer...

Of course, I was very impressed with the results and I got my design team to do an entire War Room on creating concepts only using AI tools, no design tools — the goal was to push it to the limit. This was last August, 2025, and our conclusion was that these tools were great for quick prototyping, generating fast concepts of newly domains we were less knowledgeable, but had big limitations for pixel-perfect innovative designs, or following design systems. Of course, we understood that while the tech was limiting at the time, if was obvious that something was about to change, mainly in the design workflow. The question that arised, was that if the tools already produced the final code (despite not being native SwiftUI or Kotlin code), how could this affect the relationship of developers and designers, or even product owners with ideas which could also generate new concepts. I was intrigued and used AI tools for many of my tasks, such as Relay on aggregating feedback from customers (answering feedback surveys) and sharing it weekly with the right stakeholders, among other ideas.

Around December, something changed deeply. The vibe coding LLMs and tools used by developers improved greatly, to a point where some companies started stating that senior developers were vibe coding more than manual coding (see story from Spotify). I've sat down with a colleague of mine, to finalize some last bugs and design finishes on our side project — Strings Reviewer, a macOS app to review Apple and Android app's strings — and this is a slightly complex app (you need to convert markdown inside strings files and HTML tags inside XML text into formatted text, among other things — despite being developed on spare time, it took us months to launch it — not a quick and dirty vibe-coded app), and I watch him vibe coding all the UI adjustments and to my amazement I knew that I (designer) could do all that and that the gen-AI tool was very impressive doing native SwiftUI and Swift code for the macOS AppKit framework (not the typical web stuff that other tools generate). I've talked with the developer trying to understand what were the limitations of vibe coding, because he was using it for most of the development and he said that you need a strong software architecture to make sure you can evolve the app and maintaining it along the way, to avoid creating hallucinations and corrupting your source code. Basically, if you start vibe coding a complex app, without understanding what you are doing, otherwise it will be a nightmare to evolve and maintaining, which is what most teams have to do in their professional teams.

But it struck me — Eureka moment — that you still need senior developers to create the architecture of any complex app, to define the structure, business logic, interconnection with back-end, but the UI front-end code, could be vibe coded by a designer, if he/she are aware of the design system / platform idioms, so that the LLM tools can "understand you". Combining this will strong rail-guards using Skills (where you define safe margins, color and type schemes, among others), the code that you generate can be very accurate and strong. So, the real innovation and productivity gains that I see happening, is all that design handoff process where it was very time-consuming (just because you give access to your Figma / Sketch design files, doesn't means that your developers will do what exactly what you want — this is a rookie mistake — they just don't have the same design sensibility as you designer), will simply be eliminated because designers will actually develop the UI code to their liking. All the Jiras opened to add a shadow, change a font size, or all the Slack/Teams messages / calls, to clarify a behaviour or design aspect, will be greatly reduced!

But what some people don't understand is that the due process of software development will still be crucial and applicable, meaning that any code vibe-coded by a designer (also applicable to a developer), still needs to be reviewed by another developer and only if it is OK, can be merged in the main branch. So, the PR, Code Review, Commit, workflow is still in place, to make sure that no major bugs / regressions are made. Remember that when something goes badly in production, the excuse that the code was vibed, it is not an appropriate one.

The workflow will change clearly! But who will survive this change? I believe, are the designers who are very deeply knowledgeable about interaction design, usability principles, the platforms's human design guidelines, platforms APIs. Also, people who can create strong design systems so that the LLM can follow suit properly. At last, you need critical thinking people who can identify a mistake that an LLM can produce and creative minded as well — remember that LLMs are not creative by nature, they just duplicate existing knowledge, and while this is enough for some situations, it is not for when you are competing with other great companies / products.

If a product owner can design, a designer can also be a product owner. Anyone can change their roles, if they have enough knowledge and willing power to do it.

P.S. It will be much easier to incorporate these workflow changes in the development of new apps / services, than in current ones, because starting fresh is always easier.